luv2travel100

flygirl, I suppose they'd simply skip Cairo and head down the Suez Canal like all the other ships.

Just got off the phone with Oceania. The representative (Carl) said, after checking with his manager, that the Egypt ports were cancelled due to a security alert the ship received from the port. Oceania supposedly was not told any specifics about the issue.

The representative then said the alert has been removed and the upcoming trips to Egypt (Insignia world cruise in Sept and Nautica cruise in Nov) are still a go, but that their itineraries could change depending on whether another alert gets issued.

He said there is no way to predict whether that will happen in advance.

That is extremely helpful! I will now be mixing and matching to my stomach's delight!

Thanks uktop. I sure didn't want to breach any etiquette and look like a fool. I enjoy eating and have previously sailed on Oceania where my waistline grows considerably.....

I am about to go on my first Azamara cruise. If you are eating in the main dining room and enjoy an appetizer, main dish or dessert, is it OK to order another one, or are you limited to the one offering?

Thanks all!! Very helpful. Dave

Quick follow up. Is the main dining room on the cool side, especially in the evenings? (The Mrs will want to know.)

Also for a group of 4, are there tables in the MDR for that size or will we be placed at a larger table?

Thanks again!

Quick question about what kind of shirts most men are wearing in the main dining room for dinner. I'll be on a Panama Canal cruise shortly and am wondering if most men wear short sleeve polo shirts, or long sleeve dress shirts. Thanks!

globevest, thanks for posting that stirring tribute to Dr S. Yes, humanity is filled with wonderful, caring people who all too often are ignored by the media and the rest of us. Glad you and the other passengers came out ok. But so sorry to learn of the fatalities.

We were in Warnemunde in late Aug of this year during an Oceania cruise on the Marina. There seemed to be a lot to see and do there, so I hired a private guide for the 6 in my group through Tours By Locals (TBL). (BTW, TBL arranges for tours in many cities around the world, as I came to discover.)

I had never heard of them (think I read about them in one of the CC threads somewhere) but they were easy to deal with. The emails setting up the tour went smoothly. Our guide, Britt B, was born in another part of Germany but has called Rostock home for quite awhile now. She was on time, didn't smoke, spoke excellent English, was very friendly and enthusiastic, and was very informative. She loved answering our zillion questions.

We had her for 10 hours. She brought a van and an excellent driver. We spent the day touring Bad Doberman, Wismar and Rostock. We had time at the end to drive through Warnemunde on the way back to the ship. I'd hire her again in a heartbeat.

Just got back from our Baltics cruise on Oceania's Marina. We stopped in Klaipeda. The town is pretty underwhelming.

We did a DIY tour on a pretty day, but it wasn't really memorable. Not much character to the town. The highlight was our stop at the Amber Queen, a combination of an amber store and museum which had lots of beautiful pieces for sale that seemed to be priced better than any other port. I got my wife a necklace and several pairs of earrings. She was rather pleased.:)

I say seemed because I don't know for sure. I was looking at amber in St Pete and Tallinn and I couldn't find anything under $100-!50. That wasn't the case at the Amber Queen, which has stores in other Baltic cities, too. A large operation.

Evidently, there's a LOT of fake amber and the Amber Queen is supposedly reputable, per the advice I received from the local lady on the Marina who was handing out maps and offering advice on the town. She is the one who warned me about all the fake stuff and recommended the Amber Queen. So I stayed away from the vendors in the Klaipeda market.

I did talk with some passengers who took an Oceania tour into the country and visited the home of an ex-pat, and they thoroughly enjoyed the excursion. So it sounds like taking an out of town excursion would be the way to go in this port, for those so inclined.

We had been hitting the ports pretty good by the time we reached Klaipedia so we didn't mind returning to the ship early that day. Still, I'd have much preferred Riga.

Thanks Nicho! But I may have to repack now :(.... I was thinking we'll have mostly 60-65 degree weather with no pool time. Well, regardless, I'm very much looking forward to it. Glad you had a great time. Welcome home (although maybe you'd still rather be cruising!)

Dave

Hi Nicho,

Thanks for the review.

We leave next week for a Marina Baltics cruise. How was your weather, did you use your balcony, anyone in the pool or sunning themselves, and any tips on packing, clothes in particular?

Did you find yourself needing to hit any ATMs in the ports of call? Did you use dollars anywhere?

Any other thoughts or suggestions would be great!

Dave

mom2travel, I don't blame you one bit for wanting everything ironed out ahead of time. As an attorney, I learned long ago not to leave things to chance, especially when it comes to money.

There is simply no reason for there to be a behind the curtain Wizard of Oz moment during the cruise with respect to what the amenities are. As my situation shows, you can't always rely on your TA to get it right, unfortunately.

Yes, the fact that my original sales rep left several months ago probably explains why there was a mixup. The new rep may not have had access to the emails setting out the terms of the SBC deal in June of 2013.

But that's not a mixup I want to learn about 2 or 3 days into the Baltics cruise, which is when my current rep was telling me that the amenities would be posted onto my onboard account, and would be as originally promised....

I would have been more than a little bit embarrassed to tell my wife and our 4 travelling companions that we are all short $300 in SBC with no way of knowing whether to spend it anyway and hope we'd get it back once we returned home..... Fact is I'd have been stewing the rest of the cruise. No thank you. Not when a simple phone call to Oceania BEFORE I get on the plane to Stockholm can easily avoid such an unpleasant scenario.

And please don't tell me my TA is lousy. No, the service up until the time my original agent left had been superb. Timely, prompt, courteous, etc. But once I learned she left, my lawyerly instincts kicked in, and I wanted to verify that the new person knew exactly what amenities the 6 of us had been promised. Turns out she didn't, and her vague responses to my pointed questions raised that big red flag.

In my situation, there was one way to get to the bottom of things: Call Oceania! I'm glad I did, and I'm grateful that the O rep agreed to tell me exactly what their records show we would be receiving in SBC and how much was going to be refundable. (mom2travel, I'm sorry to hear that your two phone calls to O didn't yield the same result.)

As far as I'm concerned, trust the TA but verify when necessary.

The fact is I don't want to be arguing with O or my TA about my amenities during the cruise, when I'm supposed to be de-stressing from my day job, and I don't want to be doing it as soon as I get home either.

Bottom line for me is that my current rep made a mistake when reporting to O what we were to receive; I caught the error (thanks to the O rep) and brought it to my TA's attention; and the problem was then quickly solved.

An old thread but certainly very helpful. The links still work. We'll be in this port in a couple of weeks. Lynn, thanks for the original post and SoManyPlacest2Go, thanks for resurrecting it!

Well, my agency didn't send me an invoice. So I called Oceania to find out what it was going to say. And I'm glad I did because what Oceania said I was to receive was $300 less than what my current rep was telling me I was going to receive. So that issue had to be taken care of, and was by my current rep, or so I've been told (in writing).

The second issue was a discrepancy between what my current rep said was the amount of refundable SBC and what I'd been promised in writing from my original rep. That, too, was resolved in my favor, thanks to the emails I'd saved.

Another pointer when it comes to SBC/OBC: call Oceania 10-14 days in advance of the cruise and ask them to read you the invoice you will be receiving on board spelling out your amenities. DO NOT wait until you are on the ship to find out.

As I previously mentioned, my group of 6 received excellent amenities going through our TA. With our cruise around the corner, I have spent the last month emailing my TA to re-confirm the amenities. In doing so, I learned that my sales agent has left the agency, which meant the customer service reps were trying to figure everything promised based on notes made by my sales agent.

However, I wasn't getting a straight answer and was getting passed from one customer service rep to another, all of whom assured me everything would be as promised and would be spelled out in the invoice/accounting I receive on board.

Not satisfied with that, I called Oceania and learned that my invoice wasn't matching what I'd been promised by the original sales agent. Hmmmm.

I then advised my TA's customer service rep of that and after more emails and a phone call, I got it straightened out, but only because I had saved written confirmation of the various amenities promised by the original sales agent which I could forward to the customer service rep.

So another valuable lesson is to get everything in writing, especially the amount of the refundable SBC.

This whole OBC/SBC can get confusing. We are not a part of any group on our upcoming cruise, yet our TA gave us some very nice perks because they have a "group" on our cruise. Until this thread, I didn't know what exactly a "group" meant.

To be specific, when we booked last August, our TA gave us pre-paid gratuities plus $1,400 in OBC/SBC with $1,000 refundable if not used. We have a Veranda B cabin on the Marina.

Then when Oceania ran a special this Spring offering $300 SBC plus unlimited internet for our cruise, I asked our TA to contact Oceania and ask to have those perks added to our package, and they were. And yes, I have all that in writing.

But the Blue Pamphlet from O and the Final Cruise Vacation Summary from my TA via O says I have: "$300 Complimentary Gratuities and $100 Shipboard Credit". My TA says not to worry, we'll get everything promised and it will all be spelled out on the invoice once we board. I sure hope so.....

4774Pappa,

Thanks for all the helpful info! Great stuff. FYI, the Viking Exhibition was at the National Museum until November of last year. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/19/viking-exhibition-copenhagen-london

Oh well.....

Thanks for the report. We too will be visiting this port and will most likely be looking for some Amber!

Thanks for the suggestions, gkkapp. You were thinking like I was. But now I'm changing my mind and think Stutthof and Old Town might be best to avoid any chance we'll feel rushed. Looks like Malbork needs lots of time. Plus Old Town might be a nice change of pace from the horrors re-lived in Stutthof.

I am with a group of 6 and we will be in this port (Glyndia) from 8am to 4pm. We have hired a private guide with car who says we will have time for just 2 of these 3 things: old town Gdansk, Stutthof and Malbork Castle. Which 2 should we pick?

In looking at tripadvisor and various photos of these sites, the Castle looks amazing, and Stutthof is a unique opportunity to recall a chilling past. We won't see similar sites in any of our other Baltic ports. The old town of Gdansk looks nice, but we'll be visiting other nice towns, too, including Tallinn, Helsinki, Rostock, Wismar and Bad Doberan.

So I'm thinking of picking Stutthof and Malbork. Any thoughts, comments or recommendations?

Thanks!

You guys are super helpful!! Just got an email back from my friend who will make it easy by picking us up at the dock with his car nearby so we can store our luggage in his trunk in a secure parking lot while we sightsee. Thanks again. Dave

Thanks for the links!! Very helpful.

I used the search box before posting the question and didn't see another thread. I just want back to April of this year and didn't see it either. Could you post a link to it:)?

Sounds like a very good idea to request an early disembarkation for a time in the late afternoon, assuming they'll let us do that......